Can we just establish that anyone who set an unextnguishable fire like engine fire that spread to fuel tank or wooden part of the plane be marked as the killer? it’s been too much of a case where someone put round downrange on enemy engines, setting it on fire as it spreads to fuel tanks and slowly cooking the spar only for an uncivilized skyfaring neuralink-implanted chimp to sweep for the kill with 3 bullets or so and getting the full reward.
That or at least fix the assist reward, it shouldn’t punish people who stick with their engagement and reward killstealer, it’s so frustrating to lost many potential lions to people that put minimum amount of effort for the kill.
The assist reward is pretty good, actually. If you get a bunch of hits and crits you can easily get more score from your assist than the jerk who swooped in with a missile or pilot snipe to snake the kill.
Your point stands anyway. The guy who breaks tail control, incites a flatspin, or ignites an engine fire should be awarded the kill, with the guy who finishes off this soft-killed aircraft getting the assist. Points are irrelevant; psychologically, kills are more desirable than assists, and players will always be angry when what is rightfully a kill is replaced with an assist because some “teammate” wastes ammo in an attempt to steal RP.
This is not some wild, technically infeasible ask. It’s a pretty straightforward change that would massively improve the quality of a community that routinely teamkills one another over such actions.
While we’re at it, planes that fly into terrain or rip their wings should award kills to the proximate enemy, the same as if they’d held “J.” Maneuver kills are a thing irl, and the game mechanics should not enable trolls denying their enemies’ rewards in exchange for a meaningless crew lock. Again, this is really easy to implement, and it’s strictly a matter of bad design that it hasn’t been so far, not some technical difficulty.
The really longshot, big ask? Figure out how to contribute a small amount of assist score for draining energy. Something like a point per hundred meters of altitude or 3 kph of speed that a proximate enemy drops (without any proximate allies) before dying to an ally who joins the fight late. Not necessarily something that’s economically meaningful, but just a little hint that, yes, you have contributed to your team’s performance by baiting someone into blowing their speed and altitude on you then getting cleaned up by a friend.
this, honestly i just need the kill for task, not getting this just frustrate me, heck i’ve been constantly teamkilling people who stole my kill lately, like it doesn’t matter anymore, I just want to see them dead.